What I Meant
by Carbonic
Summary: Sometimes it's not what it is, but what it means to you. Different relationships ranging from families to couples. Rated T for some language. Fourth chapter, Russia thinks about the world.
1. Chapter 1

Rome's thoughts-

* * *

Ashes and soot are, to be frank, disgusting. There's no use for them.

The fire that creates it is completely different. Its creation has become the cure for food-borne diseases and the solution to seeing beyond the darkness, to defecate on something but your own two feet.

With as much haste as it was lit to write by could be how quickly flames would turn around and murder both creator and craft.

The horizon was foretelling just that: a sunrise that never came, but stayed to glower amongst the houses and the temples and the bodies. Now not only were my hands dusted with soot, but my back was starting to peel itself away. Blood dripped onto the road behind me as I tried to continue walking.

Not one of my better ideas.

Sitting now, the fire clawed its way across the monuments, sparkling across marble to reach the more flammable insides.

Cracks could be heard more than seen at this distance. A warning cry would come out as the posts would lurch to the side like the trees that had once loomed this area before. It was ironic to be sure.

A good laugh.

Another bad decision on my part, as blood slid through my mouth and down my front to join the rest.

But I could still hold my head high, to see what I had become. I could imagine the flames away, seeing only my glorious empire as it should have been. Chaos did not do it justice.

"_Keep painting."_

Yes, it did remind me of him of all things. This is how I could stand tall against my own failure, knowing I would still be standing. This would pass, these would scar, and it would end up a rough patch like all the others.

_Feliciano did as he was told. Sitting on the banks as his brush went up and down. His face was not visible above the canvas, sniffling was the only evidence there was to a person being behind it at all. _

_A sweet child Feliciano, but he was not yet strong. So I had to be, especially as people started rushing towards us melding as best they could into the charred water, faces already wrought with smoke. _

_I made him watch as Pompeii burned alive, and I wanted to make damn sure he remembered it. _

"_Wh- why… I don't understand… Grandpa I-" The thick air muffled his speech but it was apparent he was upset. _

"_This is a lesson." I spoke louder than necessary, I didn't want screaming and loud cracking sounds to be what he learned. This was important. "This is what a disaster is."_

_He looked up at his painting, then the actual scene, back to the painting, and then crashed his eyes into the view of mine. I continued. _

"_By morning, this will be a wasteland. What trees that bore fruit, will lie dormant in their soil. What grand temples that were built, will have withered and decayed. What children that so happily played next to you, will either do so tomorrow or never again."_

_He was sobbing again. My hands tensed, should I really be going this far while he's so young? What if- no, it had to be done. I sat next to him on the grass; I wanted to be on his level. _

"_Listen to me, and listen forever." I chose this point to pick up his half finished painting, and break it into pieces. _

_His cries were deafening. Every ache could be felt, and I even had to swallow down the frog in my throat. I delved on still. _

"_Do not grieve something partially torn. Never. Tears will not make this go away, tears can not wash away all the soot, and the ash, and the rubble. You must be strong for the whole picture, and must never be afraid of what you have created being destroyed. It happens too many times, Feliciano._

_Your memories are not the painting; your knowledge is not the scrolls. You, you are it. _

_You are the trees that must be helped to live, the temples that must be constructed to be worshiped in, the people that must be encouraged to survive. _

_The painting is nothing as long as your memory of it exists." _

_He crawled into my lap, face buried into my chest. My voice softened, I pushed his head back until I made sure he was looking at me. _

"_You, my child, are everything." _

I remembered that now, more than anything that had gone on in my life as I watched my city continue to burn from a closer proximity than before.

While thinking I had wandered towards the central square, debris lurking around my feet, one of my eyes swelling itself shut from some particular injury to the city.

Perhaps it was just symbolic for my lack of judgment.

Heat compressed around the center of my beautiful home, but there was a reason to go on. To keep on longer than the fire could. I had to, even as I had to keel over in the middle of my own streets.

"_Grandpa Rome?"_

The ominous crack sounded off to my right, but I stayed still. Tears were forming as I looked around at my empire; my everything.

"_Yes Feliciano?" _

Once so beautiful and grand. The height of civilization, the poster-child for the most successful of conquests.

"_What… what if you lose your memories?"_

The tears fell only a few seconds faster than the pillar across my back, fire now eating away my sides, and rubble tucking me in.

"_Then… you have nothing." _

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Thank you for reading. I am humble to whatever you wish to say.


	2. Chapter 2

Hey, thanks for reading 3

Forgot to put it at the top the other time but, just so you know, Hetalia isn't mine. :(

Italy's thoughts-

* * *

Sometimes, when I'm cooking, I think why I am.

I wonder why I'm here, in a strange house when I tried so hard to get out of another strange house not too long ago.

I tend to stare.

The backyard is visible through the window above the sink; some days it's the sunset others it's Germany prodding at his freshly planted potatoes.

On the days when he's out there, I like to watch him. His back muscles glide over sleek bones, taking care not to pick his vegetables too early from the ground. His broad shoulders heave out his tensions, his battles, his stress. You see the warrior in him then, him and his hulking shadow. It's not all that reminds me why I agreed to fight alongside him.

It's also the yellow butterfly floating about him.

Yellow is such an auspicious colour; my alarm when I forget to close the shades, Germany's bed-mangled hair in the morning. It's the same hue that haunts around indigo bruises, the likeness of pus preceding blood in a secreting wound.

I notice these things most of all, when I seem so oblivious, because these are the things that I learn from.

The yellow of fresh golden paint and the yellow of ripened sick is much the same colour, I'd noticed. The infirmary matched the embellishments of my foyer when I crumpled to the floor after what he called a 'good battle'.

Ludwig's hair, slicked back with gunpowder and blood would have matched more with the pallet of my kitchen; a darker, almost bronze colour.

On the ground, thinking again, it seemed to me that the world needed both yellows. I needed both yellows.

May it be the slight jaundice of death or, the pale ecru of a confirmation gown.

That's how it reminded me; the flight bound creature… and Germany's tendons straining against his large frame.

Between all the running around, the fighting… I've been selecting these things that I try to notice. It helps me remember why I run or why I fight in the first place.

Germany watched as the butterfly flew around his head, a smile might have been involved, but with the low light it's hard to be sure. And just as his shadow crunching across the grass melded with the darkness, arms were wrapped around my waist.

It's these things that remind me that I run away because I want to always be in the warmth of yellows.

I fight beside him because I never want to feel its anguish.

I run away because I want to live to run my fingers through his yellow-blonde hair.

I fight beside him because I feel it worth his life to never have the ability to do so again.

* * *

I humbly thank you for your time and thoughts.


	3. Chapter 3

Hello and thank you for reading.

I don't own Hetalia. Or England. Or America. Or... what's his face... you know, the one with the bear. That one.

England's thoughts:

* * *

These hours are awful, the ones where nothing can really be done. It's the hours around 2-3 in the morning, when the only people probably still awake are too soused to do anything really productive.

The ones who are awake sit in their armchairs at home, alone, never knowing others are in the exact same position perhaps reading an old paper, or drinking.

Arthur decided on the latter.

There was a thud instead of a clink when he set the cup down; he really hadn't sat in his parlor in a while and he didn't bother to remember why. Trinkets he didn't remember getting covered in a maze of dust and webs, and whatever leather bound article was under his glass certainly wasn't his end table.

Ah, an old photo album.

Bored to curiosity, he skimmed through it not expecting memories.

He expected photos: chemically altered paper. Here was a catalogue of two dimensional diagrams of his life. No emotion should have come from something that rudimentary.

But instead, there were too many to list.

His hands clutched the spine.

_Blue eyes too large for the face they adorned, fingers gripped around England's own._

The same fingers slid down his face.

_Both blonde children getting themselves tangled in the Christmas tinsel; teeth missing in their grins._

He suddenly had a headache.

_Flying kites at the park._

His temples needed rubbing, maybe the bridge of his nose too.

_Their first vacation._

Dear God,

_Canada and his faithful bear_

Just- just stop

_Another Christmas, this time larger hands tug at the ribbons_

Stop

_The next Christmas, no pictures in between, but if there were, Alfred's scowl would have ruined them all… just like this one… _

"STOP!"

Oh dear God.

He had screamed out loud at an inanimate object, and thrown it to the ground like it had personally wronged him. The book flipped to the paper pages with no pictures stuck to them, England's fan nonchalantly flicking through them.

It wasn't filled.

England craned his neck to see the bookshelves behind him where he could see a small row dedicated to his photo albums. There was no space for this one, the three or four other photo books looked to be unused, untouched though he knew they were all filled.

Arthur was the sort of man that had no use for litter. He bought one album at a time until it was full, only then would he get a new one.

So, this is where his life ends according to empty pieces of paper.

It sounds ridiculous, but as the phantom breath kept the pages rolling each empty setting settled deep into his stomach. Every blank space ate into his mind.

_These are happy memories you should have, Arthur. But you don't. You simply… ran out. _

The pages continue to turn; he leans down with his elbows on his knees. This is where his life chose to stop, while his body kept on.

_You have the room… but no life with which to fill it… none at all… _

Alfred's grimace played in his head, and not only in that photo. In his memories that come soon after that was taken the colony's face seemed to always be wrought with something.

_You're a hollowed shell aren't you? Nothing to fill, nothing to fill… _

It wormed its way through his dry throat until finally the fan stopped, deeming the back cover too heavy to lift. Only one picture left, stuck haphazardly in the back.

Alfred had called it a Polaroid, and it was a rather candid shot where the younger (but so much older than in the other pictures) had grabbed him by the shoulders and aimed the camera back at their faces.

"_Hey England! Come see my new- cheeeeease! That's going to be a great photo! I'm sure of it!" _

Arthur put his palms to the floor crawling toward the stray photo, trying to force both the tears back into his eyes and the snot into his nose. Both were futile attempts.

He lie on the floor, the floor where the tinsel had been untangled from gleeful faces, the floor where kites had been assembled, the floor where trips had been planned, the floor where for the first time America had looked up with no apparent smile on his face telling him how tired he was of this charade, this "shit" as he put it.

He felt the same kneeling on his own floors to a piece of paper as he did in front of his own son, his own family, his own… Alfred.

Now he was the sad fuck up at 3 in the morning sobbing into his carpet because of a damn piece of paper that had been shoved into a goddamn album.

It wasn't the literal of course.

It was the feeling.

The feeling that his life ended too quickly, that part at least. There were no smiles, there was no laughter anymore. Just him and his god forsaken tears.

It reminded him how much he missed what he had and how it wasn't a coincidence that the photos ran out after they left. There was no reason to take a picture of him fighting to the death with the one, and then kind of ignoring the other.

The album told him that his life stopped around the mid-1700's.

From his parlor carpet, Arthur Kirkland agreed with it.

Alfred's photo however, told him that his life could have a new start in the late 1900's.

Crinkling in between his fingers Arthur saw America's stupid grin, his own face smashed against his chest, but the memories made him unsure.

Sometimes it wasn't the pictures but the lack there of.

Sometimes it wasn't the memories but the lack there of too.

* * *

Thank you so much for reading. I am humble towards your thoughts.


	4. Chapter 4

Has it been this long already? I suppose it has.

Something sad... well... they're all sad to a point I suppose. Oh well.

Oh yes, and before I forget, thank you for reading; it makes me smile. And I don't own Hetalia, or any of its characters just incase you thought I did.

It is Russia's turn, da?

* * *

He had a bird now.

Little and ruffled, settling inside his palms and wrapped in his scarf. He didn't feel alive; perhaps it was just too cold.

_A lot of people said that. _

His gloved thumb stroked the top of its head and he felt a tinge of pain when it lolled slightly in the direction of his caresses.

Perhaps his neck had been broken.

_Why didn't you come for warmth, little bird? Why didn't you just come to me?_

He found this was the problem most of the time. It probed his mind especially as he sat staring at the bird that now lay on his desk, which already had a large world map strewn across it. He checked his wings… left then right, holding them out perpendicular to his little body.

Even when trying to be gentle, as he pulled the right wing out one of the gray coloured feathers twisted off, landing silent on his desk: across central Europe.

_How fragile… you must be… _

The feather was inspected; the bird was probably of the pigeon variety. There were a lot of them in Moscow. Of course most of them had fled because of the weather, but this one must have been injured already.

As the feather twirled between his large fingers, he looked beyond it to the worn map.

The feather really did… remind him of everyone.

England and his London bombings, America and his wayward economy, Korea and his fake hospitality, China and his powerful façade…

They weren't unlike this feather; this bird.

Each were so easily broken because they chose to carry their own burdens, dig their own graves.

Slowly, he picked off another feather having to use force this time, and laid it on the map. He picked off three more.

Gray, black tufts of the bird were scattered around the animal after a while. He took his time, inspecting each feather as it floated to meet the rest.

_You've had your flights…_

He looked at the bird_._

_You've made your conquests…_

He looked at England.

_The entire world has been searched and scoured…_

He looked at Europe.

_There's no reason to fly anymore… is there, bird?_

He cocked his head this way and that, curious. Each part that made him up was as easily pulled apart. Almost all of the nations were covered by the pieces. Drops of blood here and there, dropping from their tips.

By nightfall, all of the bird's feathers lay about; some covering Northern America and others clouding the Middle East.

It was sickly looking, the bird. Little spots of blood in places, and crumpled up onto itself.

Smiling, Russia took the now flightless animal into his arms, cradling it against his chest.

_Sweet bird… _

He started in Russian.

_If you are the world and I have torn all the pieces from you, what are you now? _

Quietly he blew all the feathers off the map, letting them float in the air one last time.

_Little world, if only you had been in my arms sooner. _

He opened a drawer in his desk.

_Little world, your pieces are gone but despair not. I will be all the pieces for you. You need not fly, for we are all together. _

The bird now safely stowed, he clicked his office door behind him.

_Little bird, why didn't you just… come to me? _

* * *

I am humble towards your thoughts. Thank you. 


End file.
